Sky Stalker's Chronicle (Strike Witches)
by Heir of the void
Summary: Blah Blah, boy joins the 501st, ect. Using a newly developed weapons system, Micheal is lined up to join the 501st Joint Fighter Wing. However, something may be a little off about this one...


A pair of men in labcoats stood before a one-way mirror, observing the end of an era.

He was asleep.

The room the pair of scientist stood in was extremely sterile, with clean white tiles covering the walls, floor, and roof. One of the scientists, the younger of the pair, seemed excited about what they had done. The other, the older of the two, with hair going to grey, appeared to be rather more apprehensive.

"So, we've finally done it." The younger man said, "We've succeeded beyond our wildest dreams."

"Yes we have, old friend," The older scientist said, shaking his head. "Yes we have. But the steps we took to get here..."

"Are not important." The first speaker said. "What matters is what we have achieved. The salvation of our species must be held above all. Literally nothing else matters."

The other researcher placed his hand on his forehead and closed his eyes. "But... are we so sure that these steps were necessary?"

"You saw how quickly they chewed through Europe." The younger man said, clenching his fist. "You were a gambling man. Would you take that chance?"

"Those were different days." The older man responded, looking away from the mirror looking down on his handiwork. "But then again, in those days, I don't think I would have batted an eye at something like this. I'm a different man now. I've seen things that are... well, things like this."

"But think of the good we've done with this project!" The first scientist said, holding out his hands. "All of the conflicts that we will resolve. We'll put a lot of people's minds at ease. That will make it easier for them to unify to do what needs to be done. You know that."

"The grey-haired man shook his head again. "Once again, while I may concede that I agree with your goal, I cannot say that it was worth what we have done. These are two separate things."

"I'm not saying that is why we set out to do this. That was merely a fringe benefit, and you know that."

The old scientist sighed and turned fully away from the mirror. "That doesn't make me any more comfortable with what we've done. With what we've had to do, if your arguments are correct."

"Does that really matter?" The younger scientist said. "We make our decisions, and we live with them. That's all there is to it."

"That's the thing." The older man said. "I don't think that I can live with it." He reached into his pocket and produced a small pistol, a revolver. Slowly, he reached down and cocked the hammer.

"Don't be ridiculous." The younger scientist said. "I'll respect your decision. I may even agree with it. But they need us here. You can't just-"

With one swift motion, the old scientist raised the pistol to just below his chin. There was a brief report, and blood spattered across the room. The pistol dropped from the dead man's now-nerveless fingers. He teetered of an instant, then dropped to the floor with a soft _thunk_.

"Now look what you've done." The younger man said, stepping forward and picking up the pistol. His life really was complete. He had accomplished the one thing that he had, since childhood, desired to do. There was only one thing left. Despite his arguments, the old man was right

"And so it begins." He said, raising the pistol. "The Sky Stalker's Chronicle."

[V]

Michael sat in the bombardier's position in the B-24 liberator, watching the Atlantic Ocean pass by beneath him through the bombsight. It was a pleasant sight, relaxing. He rubbed the scars on his arm absentmindedly as he watched the waves pass by beneath him, then stood up. He was a tall youth of sixteen years, with short, close-cropped black hair and bright green eyes.

"Stevenson!" He said, turning toward the forward machine gunner's station and shouting slightly to be heard over the sound of the engines just outside the fuselage. "How long until we reach Britannia?"

"A while." The brown-haired man said. "Its a long flight from Liberion to Britannia. I said you could catch some sleep on the way there."

"Couldn't." Michael said. "Didn't feel right. On a real combat flight, the crew would never be allowed to sleep for a moment.

"Noble." Stevenson, the machine gunner, said. "What's the real reason."

"I'm not sure how I would catch a moment's rest with the racket in here." Michael said. "Seriously, how do you stand it?"

Stevenson laughed, a deep, full-bellied sound. "It gets a hundred percent better once you lose your hearing."

"Ha ha." Michael said. "No, really. Is there some trick to it? Something that I'm missing?"

"I suppose that you just get used to it." Stevenson said.

The tall chair in front of the radio station swiveled around, revealing a short Liberon girl. She had bright blue eyes, and long brown hair. There was a paperback book open folded over her knee, and she had a pouty expression on her face.

"We'll, I don't know how anyone gets used to it." She said, folding her arms under her rather petite breasts.

"I don't think that you have enough experience, Samantha." Stevenson responded, still not looking at her.

"Well, maybe they only pick deaf crews for these things." Samantha said. "That would explain how someone as incompetent as you got picked for this very important mission."

"Shhh, that a _seeeecert_." Stevenson said. "And besides, you've never seen me in action. How the hell do you know how good I am?"

"Meh, I can tell." Samantha replied. "That's why I was picked for this mission, after all."

"I thought you were picked for this mission because you were scared of heights." Michael said, "And because you have terrible balance, and therefore were no good at using a striker unit."

Her face turned red. "Don't you mention that."

Abruptly, the radio crackled to life and began speaking in an incomprehensible language. The message went on for a moment, then stopped, and the message began again in English.

"This is the Imperia Fuso Carrier _Akagi_ Task Group. We are under attack by a large-type Neuroi. We are launching fighters, but our escorts are taking heavy damage, and we may not be able to fight back effectively. All friendly forces in range, please respond!"

"Well, that's no good." Samantha said. "We can't allow our allies to die like that. Michael, suit up and prepare to sortie, air launch."

Michael saluted and stood up. He walked, somewhat unsteadily, toward a compartment cut into the back of the bulkhead leading to the bomb bay. He reached out, opened the door, and stepped through, closing the door behind him. He reached to the side and flicked a switch, and bright electric lights activated, revealing the contents of the bomb bay.

It was a suit of armor. It was in a standing position, and it stood a good foot above Michael's head. It was colored a dull silver, and composed of hundreds of interlocking plates. There were no gaps in the armor, just smaller plates covering the locations along the joints and other places where one might expect to find gaps on another suit of armor. The legs of the suit were particularly bulky, with small sits facing downward. The shoulders were also particularly bulky, with the Pauldrons extending back slightly from the shoulder. It gave the impression of an otherworldly construct, something not made by human hands

Working quickly, Michael striped down to his undergarments and reached into a crate next to the suit of armor and began to pull out his flight suit. It was a multi-piece garment, and putting it on took some time. The flight suit was made out of plates of armor over a stretchy undergarment. The plates of the flight suit were made of the same silvery material as the armor, and taken together, gave a similar, though greatly reduced, impression.

First came the boots. They went on in three pieces each, a base plate that went on the soles, and a piece that went on either side of the foot and clicked together and sealed with a spark of magic. The grives were next. They had a left piece and a right piece, and sealed together in a similar manner to the boots. Michael continued to assemble the flight suit, quickly reaching the chest piece. It went on in a single piece, and tightened around his chest as Michael donned it. He slid on the arms pieces on, and they fused with the shoulder piece.

No fully clad in his flight suit, Michael regarded the armor before him. _His_ armor. The Stalker. It was one of a kind, unique, precious. He had trained on its operations, but given the other preparations necessary for him to operate the suit, he wasn't trained in its use nearly as much as he would have liked.

Michael stepped forward and tapped the shoulder of the Stalker. Nothing happened for a moment, then Michael felt a jolt of magical energy run through his finger, and the suit activated. The head began to rise, pivoting backwards on the nape of the neck. The shoulders began to slide away from the main body, opening a small cavity in the sternum of the suit. As the shoulders jolted into place, the 'ribs' of the armor began to spread, enlarging the cavity formed by the retreat of the shoulders. After a few seconds, a hole several feet across had formed in the torso of the armor, large enough for Michael to stand in.

Michael took a deep breath, and extended his arms against the shaking of the aircraft, and stepped forward. He stepped up onto the block placed in front of the armor just for that purpose and turned around. This was the hard part.

Placing his hands on the cool metal of the Stalker, he pushed himself up and began to lower his body into the cavity in the armor. His legs slid in, and he could somehow feel the soft material of the magical interface surface that lined the inside of the armor. Even after spending hours in the fairly cold interior of the modified bomb bay, the interface surface somehow maintained a pleasantly warm temperature. _Magic, I suppose._ Michael thought.

As he lowered his feet into the leg cavities, Michael let himself drop into the armor. He felt the inches-thick plates of the stalker adjust around him, shaping themselves for optimal combat performance.

Michael shifted his weight in the Stalker unit, the reached forward and inserted his arms into arms of the Stalker. Like the legs, they adjusted slightly as he put them on, fitting him perfectly.

With his arms spread wide, Michael was locked into place as the 'ribcage' and shoulders of the Stalker closed on him, trapping him. He felt a moment of absolute terror, as if he had been buried in the most confining coffin imaginable.

Then there was a flash of magic, a burst of energy coursing through him. Michael wasn't a male witch, or anything like that. He wasn't capable of producing his own magic. His armor did that. He was a conduit, a rare man capable of absorbing and shaping magic, but not producing it.

There were no real statistics available on how many conduits there were in the world, as one could live out their life without ever encountering the sort of magic that would reveal their abilities. Even them, most conduits would never know how, or have the chance to, do anything useful with their abilities.

As the magic ran through his body, Michael felt his claustrophobia fade away as his tactile senses returned to him, somehow transmitted through the thick metal plates of the Stalker. He was the armor. The helmet descended, separating into four pieces which locked around his head. The inside of the faceplate lit up, showing him the inside of the aircraft from a slightly different perspective than the moment before.

Another, less intense, flash of magic coursed through Michael's body as the magic engines on the back plate of the armor activated. This time, the energy didn't fade away, but rather it endured, leaving Michael at a heightened level of awareness.

Carefully, Michael began to direct the energy flowing through him. Unlike a witch, he lacked a familiar to allocate his magic for him; he had to do everything manually. That limited his options somewhat during combat, and prevented him from being a versatile as a witch of a similar power level would be. It also left him with several notable deficiencies in combat. For one thing, he couldn't conjure an automatic barrier like a combat witch could, leaving him more vulnerable to the heavy beam attacks of the Neuroi than a witch might be.

Once he completed his power allocation calibrations, Michael bent down, no longer unduly concerned by the shaking of the aircraft, and picked up his weapon. It was a rather unique piece of work, a multi-barreled rotary cannon, capable of firing a deadly stream of magically-enhanced .50 caliber ammunition at the enemy. It could fire faster, and maintain a longer burst than an ordinary machine gun, but it also consumed ammunition at a much greater rate.

Thankfully, the Stalker was bulky enough to carry quite a lot of ammunition.

The gun itself was a long-barreled affair, with multiple barrels visible at any one time, in contrast to the Maxim gun of previous decades. The weapon was colored a dull, gunmetal grey, with brighter silvery bands binding the various barrels together. It was fed out of a large box magazine, and its handgrips were oversized to accommodate the larger-than-human hands of the stalker.

Once he was confident that everything was ready, Michael stepped forward and rapped with one hand on the bulkhead of the aircraft. A second later, an answering knock came, and Michael stepped backwards toward the original position that the Stalker had occupied.

Seconds after he reached the position, the bomb bay doors of the B-24 opened. Michael consciously overrode the heightened sense of balance the Stalker gave him and leaned backwards.

Then he fell into the abyss.

Michael roll over as he dropped out of the bomber so he was falling on his stomach. Then, he activated the Stalker in its primary function. He felt a slight vibration as the Magic engines and other, more arcane, systems on the Stalker activated.

Then he spread his wings.

There was no other way to put it. It was like he had extra limbs attached to his body, ones that he had never noticed before. He moved them more or less on instinct, and they responded in ways that defied the laws of nature.

Magic.

Twin fans of silver light extended from the Stalker's oversized shoulders, each composed of multiple planes that formed into a fractal pattern pointed at Michael's head. They flexed slightly as, with an act of will, he began to climb.

Once he felt reasonably comfortable with his flight path, Michael began to look around. He spotted the bomber he had dropped out of. It was presently above and ahead of him, but he was gaining fast.

As soon as he had risen to just above the level of the bomber, Michael began to accelerate. The Stalker couldn't accelerate quickly, but it could build up quite a lot of speed on a straightaway. Michael began to quickly overtake the bomber, wings of light glittering as he accelerated past the heavy aircraft.

Previously, the group abod the bomber had discussed the location of the _Akagi_ task force, and its location relative to the course of the bomber, so Michael had a relatively good idea of where it was. He cut across the path of the bomber, waving as he did so. He had no idea if the people aboard the aircraft could see him, but still.

The bomber flashed out of his field of view, and Michael settled into the long, boring portion of the flight. He had practiced a few time over the desert, and the majority of each training mission had consisted of long flights to and from the target area. Tedious, but necessary.

Only a few minutes passed, however, before something came into view. It looked like a small, distant smudge on the horizon. Michael drew closer, and as he did so, he caught sight of a flash of red light inside the smudge and a splash of orange near its base.

_The task force_! He thought, and began accelerating again toward the distant target.

It closed quickly, and Michael could soon make out the shapes of the various Fuso ships of the force, as well as massive Neuroi attacking them.

It was a hideous thing, like something out of a nightmare. Nearly the size of the ships it was attacking, it was shaped like a flying wing aircraft, but given the low speed of its movement, it was clear that the principles of Newton and Bernoulli had nothing to do with what kept this creature aloft. There were several major protrusions from the creature, like oddly symmetrical tumors.

As Michael watched and closed with the Task Force, a massive beam of red light shot from the creature and struck on of the escort ships of the task force. There was a flash of light and a titanic plume of fire, water, and metal. As the smoke from the explosion faded, Michael saw that there was a massive hole torn in the side of the ship, which was slowly rolling over and sinking.

Micheal thought himself glad that he was too far away to see the tiny figures doubtlessly scrambling away on the deck of the ship.

While he drew closer to the task force, Michael readied his weapon. As he did so, he spotted something shining and blue appear on the deck of the _Akagi_. Michael continued to close, and as he did so, he spotted a tiny speak rising to join the aerial melee he could only now begin to make out around the Neuroi.

_A witch!_ He thought, trying to follow the figure's ascent. _Why didn't she launch sooner?_

As Michael closed on the Neuroi, he raised his gun to his shoulder and pressed the first trigger, the one that spun the barrels up to firing speed. The massive gun in his hands vibrated slightly as the barrels reached speed, then Michael drew a bead on the distant Neuroi.

He corrected for range and wind, then pulled the primary trigger.

The gatling gun almost seemed to _whir_ as it fired one bullet after another toward the distant target. Smoke flickered around the end of the barrels before being blown away by the wind of Michael's speed, and the massive recoil of the gun was absorbed by the heavy armored gauntlets of the Stalker. One round in every five was a tracer, and Michael watched with satisfaction as the bullets arced towards the Neuroi rapidly filling up his field of view.

As crystalline panels of the creature shattered into vanishing flecks of white light, Michael felt a twinge between his shoulder blades as if the attention of something infinitely more vast than himself had just turned its attention toward him.

Abruptly, beams of energy lept from the surface of the Neuroi and jumped toward Michael and the Stalker. They bent in midair as they shot toward Michael, each following a slightly different but perfectly straight path through the air. Michael rolled, then began to pull upwards. The first of the beams seemed to pass underneath him, but the ones behind them corrected. Michael thrust his torso upwards, and the sudden change in air resistance and redirection of thrust sent his popping upwards, at a considerably reduced speed.

The beam attack cut out as the Neuroi turned its attention towards the swarms of Fuso fighter aircraft that continued to harass it. There were several flashes of light as one, two, three of the human aircraft were shot out of the sky.

Michael continued on his path over the Neuroi, barrels of his gun still spinning. He let up on the 'spin' stud, and fingered the switch that ejected the box of ammo from the gun. He reached down to his waist, where several fresh boxes of ammunition were attached to the Stalker. He pulled one free, and slotted it into his gatling gun, then lowered the weapon at the Neuroi and opened fire.

_I have to find the core!_ Michael thought, eyes scanning desperately across the surface of the creature. Lacking a witch's innate ability that might grant him the ability to find it, he was forced to resort to more primitive methods to attempt to find the core of the beast.

_Damnit, I was supposed to operate as part of a team!_ He thought, watching helplessly as another Fuso fighter went down in flames.

The magazine clicked empty again, but Michael was already moving to reload his weapon. As he was doing so, he heard a crackle of static over his Magic Radio. There were two such devices included in Stalker, both already tuned to the 'frequency' used by the 501st joint fighter wing.

"This is Fuso Imperial Navy Major Sakamoto Mio. Unidentified unit, identify yourself immediately or you will be engaged!"

This Witch Major clearly wasn't one to mince words. Fortunately, she was speaking English, the official language of the Britannia Defense Zone.

"This is U.S. Stalker Unit 01." I responded. "And don't you think you're stretched a little thin as is?"

The Major growled, then sighed. "Provide immediate support to the Task Force, them. Sakamoto out."

Michael was jinking during the conversation, but he was distracted slightly by the abrupt end of the discussion and had allowed himself to become too predictable in his movements, and one of the beams of light spearing out from the Neuroi found its mark, striking him in the leg.

Immediately, his body shield flared. It was different from a witch's barrier, and weaker in some respects, but it provided constant protection from all angles, and was the best the engineers working on the Stalker Project could come up with.

The shield deflected the attack, but Michael felt an unpleasant tingle run through him as magical energy was siphoned out of his body by the shield. It was second in energy priority, just behind the levitation and propulsion systems.

Michael grimaced as he watched his shield's energy status dropped. He needed to end this fight quickly, or he would be in real danger of running out of Magic.

_If I was a core, where would I hide?_ Michael thought. The obvious answer was the creature's center of body mass, but at the speed he was moving, it was hard to concentrate fire in one place long enough to chip through to the center of the monster.

Michael fired a long burst, then he was beyond the Neuroi, flying into open sky. He banked into a turn, moving back toward the monster. Then he spotted something. A flash of blue light, and several of the Neuroi beams deflecting away from the source of the flash. That had to be the Witch he had talked to earlier.

"Major!" He shouted, "where is the core of the Neuroi? Do you know?"

"Along the centerline of the thing, near the tail." The major replied.

"I'll distract it. You go for the core!" Michael said.

"So you're giving me orders now?" The Major responded.

"It only makes sense. You know the exact location of the core."

"Fine." Sakamoto said. "Major out."

Michael returned his focus to the Neuroi as he drew closer, then targeted on of the large red sections on the wings of the thing that seemed to be the source of most of its energy blasts.

He raised his Gatling gun as he zoomed toward the beam emitted, jinking wildly as he did so. Michael was still hit twice before he felt that he was in range to reliably hit the creature, but he shrugged off unpleasant coldness of the shield drain and pressed his attack.

Once he drew close enough, Michael opened fire with his weapon. The magically enhanced slugs tore into the strange, alien, tissue of the Neuroi, shattering the strange material into glowing shards. Abruptly, the torrent of beams issuing forth from the Neuroi fell by nearly half.

Behind Michael, Major Sakamoto suddenly shot forward and arched upwards, shooting through the zone of sky now left unguarded by the destroyed section of the Neuroi, and then cut back inwards towards the Neuroi, bare steel in hand.

She flashed forward, pouring magic into her sword. It burst to life with magical flames as she struck the Neuroi and flew expertly across it surface, light bursting outwards from the gash she left behind her in the creature, which was much deeper than it should have been given the dimensions of her sword.

Then she reached the core of the creature. Her sword passed over it, but the torrent of magical fore rippling behind it struck the core with immense force, shattering it instantly.

Major Sakamoto flew beyond the surface of the Neuroi. For a moment, nothing happened, then the whole creature seemed to collapse, crumbling into brilliant shards of white light that seemed to fade away into luminescent snowflakes, which themselves faded away into nothingness.

Then there was only the smoke of the burning task force below and the buzz of Fuso fighters in the sky.

Michael, who was hovering in the airspace that had once been filled by the Neuroi, watching the now hovering Major in awe. _This_ was what he was supposed to complete with?

Then he let out a deep breath he hadn't realized he had been holding, then he turned and began to fly toward the damaged Fuso carrier below.


End file.
